§ Repairs during the last half of the year have received the very closest attention with the result that we have secured an enormous increase in the output of repaired tonnage. I cannot give a comparison with pre-war efforts because until the Admiralty Controller's Department 1022 was established no comprehensive figures existed. In any event the comparison would be useless, as the extensive damage by torpedo and mine necessitates repairs in no way comparable to peace-time repairs generally.
§ It is common knowledge that at the end of the first half of last year the repair yards were full of work, and numbers of damaged ships were beached and a waiting repairs. A central organisation was created in the summer of 1917, and the increase in the average weekly output of repaired merchant tonnage in February, 1918, as compared with August, 1917, is 80 per cent.—an increased repair output of sixty-nine merchant ships, representing no less than 237,000 tons per week in the later month. This repair figure cannot be too clearly grasped and understood. In February we completed repairs to merchant craft at an average of 166 ships per week, representing more than 500,000 tons. One factor, to which I have already drawn the attention of the House, has contributed largely to the increase in the repairs of merchant tonnage, that is the development of the convoy system. Owing to the operation of this system, a large proportion of vessels damaged by torpedo managed to reach port, that is, an increase on the demand upon our resources which we should welcome. If a number of these vessels had been torpedoed further out to sea they would undoubtedly have been totally lost.
§ Incidentally, to show how complex the question is, we had to decide whether we should sacrifice other shipbuilding in order to build tugs to meet the demand thus created for increased salvage, and decided to do so. Having regard to the value of the ships and lives at stake, no one will deny our decision to do so was right. It all tells against our mercantile output, nevertheless. The more we repair the greater the drain upon our shipbuilding resources. The 80 per cent. increase in merchant ship repairs, however, by no means exhausts the effort which has been made in repair work. We have now had three and a half years of war, and only those who have knowledge of the work of the Fleet can form some idea as to the demand on repair facilities which is made to keep the Fleet in full efficiency. There are thousands of craft, from battleships to trawlers, employed on naval service, and on figures taken out over a quarter—October, November, December, 1917—we docked last 1023 year ten times the naval craft for repairs and refits which were docked in peace time. Over 3,000 of these vessels were docked, repaired and refitted in the last quarter of last year, all at the rate of 12,000 per annum on naval service. These refits are more extensive than in peace time, as the guns and appliances have to be continually improved and various offensive and defensive appliances have to be added. As indicating the extent of the repairing effort, I am advised by experts that the additional men we have put onrepairs—that is, both merchant and warship repairs—could have produced 500,000 tons of new merchant tonnage per annum if they had been so employed.